An update from the field by a friend of a friend on the situation in Turkey.
It's hard to believe Erdogan's criminal regime sits practically inside Europe and is a prominent member of NATO.

Today 11 HDP (Peoples’ Democracy Party) parliamentarians were taken into custody. And to-date, 170 media outlets have been banned, 130 journalists in prison, and 30 democratically elected Kurdish Mayors in prison.

Today, the Turkish police took eleven HDP (Peoples’ Democracy Party) parliamentarians, including the co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, into custody in after-midnight raids. The MPs’ houses and the party’s headquarters were raided, doors were broken and the parliamentarians were forcefully detained.

In the past several months, the government has been using the coup attempt on July 15th as an opportunity to consolidate its rule by eliminating every single oppositional voice in the country, especially the HDP, which halted the authoritarian project of a presidential system both in the June and November elections in 2015 by preventing his AKP to win sufficient number of parliamentary seats to make the necessary constitutional changes.

About 30 democratically elected Kurdish mayors are in prison now and about 70 of them have been dismissed by the central government.

The freedom of expression has been almost entirely undermined. With government decrees with the power of law, over 170 media outlets have been banned. More than 130 journalists are in prison, also including some world-renowned authors and intellectuals.

Most recently, two Kurdish news agencies and several Kurdish dailies were closed and the chief-editor, columnists and journalists of the pro-Republican People Party (CHP) daily Cumhuriyet were detained. Many academics are under criminal investigation for signing a peace petition.

Friends from around the globe, these are days when we most need international solidarity.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 4th, 2016 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Politics, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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I have never understood why Turkey is so highly regarded. Even with my limited knowledge, I see it as 3 separate entities. It's a totally dysfunctional nation and has no place the EU and would not even be in NATO if it wasn't considered a "strategic" partner. The Kurds need the support of the rest of the World - I don't think the corrupt, power and money grabbing Western Turks need anything except exposing!